The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-08
FRENCH HOME AND SENTI-
 MENT.
BY W. c. nRow NELL

bf c. hkoN MILL
 The French community is destitute of many sentimental influences which are very potent with us. The home for instance, in England and among ourselves is nursery of sentiment to degree which it certainly is not II France-right as the French arc in re- senting our absurd misconception oi their home lite. Mother and children are not, in France, brought into such sympathetic and sentimental relations, The reciprocal affection is, of course, just as sure and puissant, but its sinews are rational. She does not ef- face herself so much, and aspire to 1 live only in them. They are educa- tionly and otherwise occupied instead of developing emotional precocity. There are no long readings winter evenings, and none of that intimate companionship so often productive of what, physiologically speaking, has been so aptly termed emotional prodigality." Our society Is in con- siderable measure leavened by young men who, chiefly through this prodi- gality, have at one time or another contemplated entering the ministry, and have abandoned the notion only after the momentous struggle which leaves lasting traces on the scnsibility. French youth do not know what sol itude is; their only "communings' are communication. They naturally have less aptitude for the spiritual side of life than for it's sensual and rational sides the tendency to mater ialism is never far from the surface.
 In fine, when the French enter the realm of sentiment they do not seem quite at home. They are in danger of becoming either fantastic or conyon- tional. "Les deur tours de Nofre Dame sont ie 1T de Hugow exclaims, one day, Auguste Vacquerie to Jules Claretie, and Claretie chronicles the remark as an impressive one. Simi- lar extravagances pass muster in the sphere of art, though only where sen- timent is concerned. On the other hand, though nowhere is beauty ad- mired more fanatically-adored more abjectly, one may almost say-the idea of it is often conventional enough. Expression, sentiment, do not count for so much as regularity. Le chdr1he prime id bedute is French adage. but what constitutes charm Is the real question. As the vocabularies dis close, a single French word an- swers to .sbeautiful, fine, hand some." Sometimes beauty is mere chic, cdchet, style, order and move- ment in carriage. That at any rate is, as matter of fact, the great Parisian substitute for beauty, and has doubt less become so by natural selection. Accordingly, for the most part they confine their activities to the sphere of the intelligence, where they are never fantastic and rarely perfume tory: and they find no difficulty whatever in doing this, because the atmosphere of the intelligence is their natural element. Notice, for ex- ample, the diction of French acting. It is the sense and not the sentiment of the verse or prose that is savored bv the actor and the audience. The voice never caresses the emotion evoked by the significance of the lines beyond the point needful for complete expression. The personal feeling by which such an actor as Salvini infuses warmth and glow into his most artistic impersonations the boards of the Commelie Franchise never witness. It is an impersonal, that is to say, purely intellectual enjoyment that one obtains from the delicious voice and admirable acting of Mime. Sarah Bernbardt, when she is at i,er best, when she Is most con- tained, when she appeals most strongly to the Parisian. There is absolutely no sentiment whatever in that quintes- sence of the exquisite which has made Mime Judic the most popular actress of Paris. An American or Englishman, and l should suppose, fortiort, a German, is infallibly much impressed in his early stages of French theatre going at the absence of intensity in the love- passages the absence of all that kissing, clasping, enfolding, rushing together, gazing into the depths of each others eyes in fine, all that effort to enact the unntterable which is so characteristic of cur stage as to have become thor ough!y perfunctory. That this sort of thing does not exist on the French stage is partly due, to be sure, to 6 nicer sense of propriety, which die tates the limits of what is fit subject for artistic representation but mainly it is to be ascribed to the predomi- nance of good sense over sentiment in the French appetite.-Scribner's Magazine for October,